Does the same childlike awe and sense of infinite possibility you felt when looking at pop-up books as a kid translate to adult-sized versions of pop-up furniture, rooms and even entire houses today? These transforming objects dramatically expand from a flat package just by pulling on one end, revealing themselves to be surprisingly strong and usable three-dimensional objects.

Pop-Up Interactive Apartment

This ‘pop-up interactive apartment’ by students at TU Delft adapts to inhabitants’ needs by constantly changing functions, bending and sliding folding polypropylene panels to offer chairs, beds, desks and other furniture or fold up out of the way. The result is an apartment that transforms to use a single room for many functions, without requiring any physical effort on behalf of the people who use the space.

Folding Flat-Pack M.A.Di House

This flat-pack house comes in a folded sheet with connected roof panels that pop up into an A-frame with the help of a crane. Once the easy-to-transport 5-foot-tall package is onsite, it takes less than a day to install, and it comes in several different sizes from a 495-square-foot studio to a 904-square-foot family home. The profile and hinges are made of steel, while much of the rest of the home is made of strong and durable cross-laminated timber (CLT) making the whole structure earthquake-resistant.

De-Dimension Furniture by Jongha Choi

Take this two-dimensional geometric wall art down, unfold it in one swift motion, place it on the floor and you’ve got a piece of furniture. ‘De-Dimension’ is a series of pop-up flat-pack furniture by designer Jongha Choi representing his ideas about perspective. “If our perception of an object is not different on a plane image and an actual subject, isn’t it possible to substitute the two with each other?”

Pop-Up Shelf by Meike Harde

How much bookcase do you really need? Maybe you could use a full-height storage piece, or maybe you want it to be shorter to fit beneath a window. German designer Meike Harde’s ‘Stockwerk’ shelf comes as a flat-pack item and easily expands without the need for tools, with pieces that fit together like a puzzle.

Slinky-Style Accordion Chairs That Stretch and Bend

Like a slinky, the Flexible Love Sofa and Chair start out tightly packed into a small package and then expand to surprising lengths when you pull on either end. The furniture series is made from 100% recycled paper, yet the sofa can hold up to 4,232 pounds when fully expanded, and snap back to a mere 5 inches in width when contracted.